Sacramento daily record-union., 1887-08-11
THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON s0An
THEN AND now.


parable climatic heritage they enjoy.
THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON soAn
THEN AND HOW.
Says the San Francisco Aba: @0ur
people are getting alive to the fact tina.
such extensionof the transportation sys-
TEN of the ceast as the California and
Oregon road promises, secures the position
Of San Francisco as the New York of the
Pacific. There is room on the coasts of
this continent for two great commercial
cities, andethough Eastern capital may not
like it, San Francisco is set upon proving
this by being the commercial peer of New
York. The matter hangs entirely upon
an efficient railway system, owned and
controlled here, and to make the statement
does not involve the necessity, as cranks
seem 10 imagine, of holding in favor of
the angelic attributes Of railway men. Ii
by any process the control of our RAILWAYS
should fall to Eastern capital, is there any
assurance that the policy of its manage
ment would be any mere agreeable to our
public? We stand for the rights of Cali
iornia and for the conditions of a glorious
commercial future for San Francisco and
we have suspicion that Eastern capital
lists will not break their necks to give us
anything they have without money and
without price"
But we recall from the dustless recesses
of memory the day when San Francisco
expression concerning the California and
Oregon road was very differently formu-
lated. 1t requires no great stretch of
memory to bring back TO mental vision the
day when San Francisco not only refused
to declare in favor of the completion of
that line, but when 1t did what it could to
cripple the effort to drive it through and
over Typographical difficulties seemingly
insurmountable Indeed, some of the San
Francisco press went so far as to declare
that the marriage of the waters of the
Northwest with the tides of the Gulf by
bond of rail was matter of indifference
to that city, and one that could not ma
terially affect her, while as to the de-
velopment of extreme northern counties.
they were on the whole scarce worthy of
the effort. 1t was in the era when the
preservation of the land grant to the road
was the only basis upon which credit for the
construction of the line could be based. and
was one for which San Francisco declined
to lift finger, but rallied at the company
projecting the line, demanded the forfeit
ure of the grant, and told the road build
ers to "go help themselves if they must
lay track over the northern mountains
and through the dark canyons of Siskiyou.
However, the light forced conviction of
its error upon San Francisco at last. and
she came to realize, just in the nick of
time, that one of the grandest schemes of
the day of which California could be the
beneficiary is an all rail line through the
heart of Oregon and down the Sacramento
and the San joaquin valleys, uniting the
extreme north and the gulf south in COM
mercial unity by great highway travcrs-
ing the entire length of our State, and ter
minating only at the mouth of the
Mississippi. Ii will not be many
months before the inestimable benefits to
California of this magnificent avenue of
transportation will be acknowledged by
the people of San Francisco with an en-
thusiasm and sincerity that will make
once antagonistic influences in that city
pray that in mercy their continued hos
tility and outrageous demands NAV be
biotted from the memory of men.
And precisely the same is to be said of
the influences that exerted themselves to
the utmost to prevent or hinder the up-
building of the railway system of Califor-
MIA, and the consolidation of ownership
and control of the several feeders and in
dependent roads, essential to harmonious
railway system, and vitality necessary to
maintenance of the trauscontinental trunk
lines. They were then extremely anxious
that control should fall into foreign hands.
and that such railroads as we might secure
should be little independencies. without
strength and struggling each to maintain
an individuality not possible in State so
young, so remote, and in system depend
ent upon region in the jnvenility of de-
velopment We take it that these same in
huences would find it very difficult to muster
a corporal's guard to-day of California citi-
zens so blind to the best interests of the
State as to advocate the disruption of the
California railway system, or the ceding of
1t to control, the interests of which are
not sentimentally, as well as practically,
loyal to the State and her commercial de-
velopment.
SAYS an Omaha paper, where the people